Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General No XP from disarm and lockpicking

I think that lockpicking usefulness problem can be solved only this way:
-if you break the chest you get broken junk, or nothing at all.

But I agree that not giving XP for any alternative ways of solving ingame problems is making some abilities pointless. And not only pickpocketing, disarming and lockpicking, but also sneaking - why sneak through a bunch of goblins on the way to the mines if that gives no XP? But you get tons of XP for slaughtering them.

so it absolutely absurd to skill this Attribute... ! ! ! !

For doors, Exploration XP exists for when you get to the other side of some doors, regardless of whether you keyed or lock picked or bashed or whatever.

I always thought the reward for disarming traps was the trap not killing you, the reward for opening treasure chests was the treasure, the reward for unlocking doors was to get to the other side, etc.

I didn't realize that people needed more cake with the carrot, so to speak.

One potential solution is to have a chance that the loot in the chest you are blowing apart with a fireball gets destroyed, ruined or degraded by the action. Also, if you are shooting magic spells and bashing doors that are in people's line of sight, that should call attention to you just like stealing and you should loose attitude points with people nearby.

The game doesn't need to be set off balance by adding XP to lockpicking, but the alternative to not sneaking and lockpicking should have logical consequences that make lockpicking advantageous to learn if you don't want the entire legion after you.

equip a staff and use the staff range attack skill. causes zero durability loss. each cast is kind of slow, so alternating between 2 characters will speed it up.

its still relatively slow to break a door down, but it can completely circumvent the durability loss mechanic even for pure physical characters.

The lockpicking skill should be removed and lockpicking should become a skill based minigame with harder locks being harder to pick.

The fact that you need to invest into a skill for lockpicking, and the fact that you need lockpicking 5 for over half of the things you can lockpick are why lockpicking can't be good. Busting down doors and chests doesn't require investing into any skill, lockpicking shouldn't be any different. Make lockpicking gain bonuses to how easy it is from certain attributes like Dexterity and Perception.

Hahaha... minigame.

No, just... no. Really.

You could make other changes.

1. Give XP to lockpicking: This is silly. It sort of makes breaking things the wrong choice.
2. Destroy items for breaking things. This is pointless for doors, and makes it the incorrect option for chests.

Those aren't exactly bad things you can do, they just so happen to make lockpicking the right choice. If the goal isn't to make lockpicking the right choice then it can't require point investment. Lockpicking will always be the wrong choice if it requires point investment and isn't better. So there's more options.

3. Remove the skill and make it always work. This is boring.
4. Remove the skill and make it have a chance to work. This is boring and frustrating.
5. Give you a chance to succeed based on the skill level instead of "level too low." There's no reason to ever invest points into the skill like this so it's effectively the same as solution 4.

So to summarize, those options boil down to: Making lockpicking the correct choice or making lockpicking boring and possibly frustrating.

As a newb to RPG's still playing on Easy, I hope they leave lockpicking in because it is definitely useful in the early game until one learns alternatives. I appreciate that many old hands at these games know all the tricks, but many of us are still getting there, and as they say, getting there is half the fun.

Since I have played since Alpha, I have loved the rogue and the ways of Dirty Deeds. I suggest something that is a mixture of earlier suggestions with a twist.

1. When lockpicking a chest, you gain a % chance for more magic items boost to the items within. This would give you a reason to try and lockpick vs breaking it down.

2. When lockpicking a door, the operation is completely silent and you are able to do it in sneak mode. If they made normal and magic attacks easier for the occupants to hear and activate on, then it would dissuade people from just breaking down the door.

I've suggested this idea before and I'm on board with it. I've only come across one chest so far that couldn't be bashed, which makes lockpicking completely pointless.

As for rewarding XP for things like lockpicking, I don't really care. It's not a system like crafting where there's a reward intrinsic in the system; as the game is, there are better alternatives to lockpicking and disarming traps so putting points into lockpicking does need to be justified *somehow*. People coming down on BG2 for doing the same thing, but the experience bonus in BG2 was largely neglible. I think it's one of the worst ways Larian could make lockpicking meaningful, but I'm not really oppossed to it.